DialogPlus Toolkit

Draft

Definition

The Dialog Plus Toolkit is to guide and support teachers as they create, modify, and share learning activities and resources.

Dialog Plus is an online browser-based application (free access on 17:33, 22 November 2006 (MET)) and it is sponsored by the British JISC/NSF funded DialogPlus project.

Purpose

This tool is partly insprired by IMS Learning Design and somewhat related toolkits like LAMS and MOT.

According to Conole and Fill (2005: 1), “despite the plethora of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) tools and resources available, practitioners are still not making effective use of e-learning to enrich the student experience”. The Dialog Plus learning design toolkit should guide practitioners through the process of creating pedagogically informed learning activities which make effective use of appropriate tools and resources.

The learning design toolkit described can be used for three main purposes:

1. As step-by-step guidance to help practitioners make theoretically informed decisions about the development of learning activities and choice of appropriate tools and resources to undertake them.
2. As a database of existing learning activities and examples of good practice which can then be adapted and reused for different purposes.
   1. As a mechanism for abstracting good practice and metamodels for e-learning

Conole and Fill (2005: 7-8)

The tool

The learning activity

The notion of a learning activity (LA) is at the heart of the tool and it is composed of three elements:

• The context of the activity: e.g. subject, level of difficulty, intended learning outcomes and the environment within which the activity takes place.

• The learning and teaching approaches: including theories and models.

• The learning tasks: This includes type of task, techniques used, associated tools and resources, interaction and roles of those involved and learner assessment.

Learning Activity - Top Level, from Conole and fill (2005), reproduced without permission

Learning and teaching approaches

Assessment types

Task types and resources

Task techniques include brainstorming, exercise, field work, role play, reflection and syndicates. The authors “identified almost thirty techniques to be stored in the toolkit such that advice can be offered to practitioners. Interactions required are likely to be individual, one to many, student to student, student to tutor, group or class base”.

Available resources and tools are based on the Laurillard conversational framework five principal media forms (Narrative, Communicative, Adaptive, Productive, and Interactive) (Laurillard, 2002, p.90). Narrative media tell or show the learner something (e.g. text, image). Interactive media respond in a limited way to what the learner does (e.g. search engines, multiple choice tests, simple models). Communicative media facilitate exchanges between people (e.g. email, discussion forum). Adaptive media are changed by what the learner does (e.g. some simulations, virtual worlds). Productive media allow the learner to produce something (e.g. word processor, spreadsheet).

Links

Dialog Plus

• DialogPlus Nugget Developer Guidance Toolkit

• The Dialog Plus Toolkit (DPT) User Guide

References

• Gráinne Conole and Karen Fill (2005). A learning design toolkit to create pedagogically effective learning activities. Journal of Interactive Media in Education (Advances in Learning Design. Special Issue, eds. Colin Tattersall, Rob Koper), 2005/08. ISSN:1365-893X Abstract (PDF/HTML open access)

Other publications by the authors

Conole, G. (2002). 'Systematising Learning and Research Information', Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 7. Abstract (HTML/PDF).

Conole, G. (2004). 'Report on the effectiveness of tools for e-learning', report for the JISC commissioned Research Study on the Effectiveness of Resources, Tools and Support Services used by Practitioners in Designing and Delivering E-Learning Activities. [cited] [cited]

Conole, G. and Dyke, M. (2004). 'What are the affordances of Information and Communication Technologies', ALT-J, 12.2,113-124.

Conole, G., Dyke, M., Oliver, M. and Seale, J. (2004). 'Mapping pedagogy and tools for effective learning design', Computers and Education, 43 (1-2), 17-33

Conole, G. and Oliver, M. (2002). 'Embedding Theory into Learning Technology Practice with Toolkits, Journal of Interactive Media in Education, Special issue on learning technology theory', Open University, 2002(8), http://jime.open.ac.uk/.